On October 2, 2023, La Poste issues a new stamp in the Métiers d'Art series initiated in 2016. After the stone sculptor, the jeweler, the ironworker, the cabinetmaker, the leatherworker, the crystal cutter, the bookbinder, the organ builder, metal engraver, ceramist, stained glass maker, feather maker, violin maker, coppersmith, fan maker, it is the know-how of the illuminator that is in the spotlight.
With its roots in the centuries-old tradition of manuscript illustration, the illuminator profession is today recognized as one of the 281 art professions in France. It is officially practiced by around sixty artists whose activities can be as varied as restoration, teaching, the creation of prestigious documents, advertising or contemporary artistic creation. Taught at the European Higher Institute of Illumination and Manuscripts in Angers, he perpetuates excellent know-how.
Art of ornament painted entirely by hand, the profession of illuminator requires mastery of numerous techniques: those of the support, the preliminary drawing, the chemistry of the pigments and their grinding in mortar, the affixing of the sheet gold or silver and its polishing, as well as the application of color and binders using very fine brushes. It is an art of constraint, inseparable but not subordinate to the text. It is also and above all an art of illumination. Because the Latin etymology of the word is clear on this subject: illuminare, to bring to light, to give to the text, to the letters which introduce and support it, to the margins and other spaces of the page a brilliance which carries the meaning, reveals it , gives it relief and adequate splendor. It is impossible not to link the practice of this exceptional profession to the period of the European Middle Ages during which it became an art in its own right. It then flourished in the service of monastic copying of the great founding texts of Christianity, then, in the Roman and Gothic era, of all important texts, both religious and secular. An epic as vast and rich as that of Western medieval painting of which it is the best preserved and most flamboyant example.
